Five faces to watch in the new German government

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is starting her fourth term with a much-changed top team in which only three ministers in the new 16-member Cabinet keep their old jobs. There are new faces in some key positions – the finance, foreign, economy and interior ministries.

CHANCELLOR ANGELA MERKEL, 63

Angela Merkel leaves the voting cabinet when Germany´s parliament Bundestag met to elect her for a fourth term as chancellor AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Germany’s leader since 2005, Mrs Merkel is embarking on a fourth term that could see her equal the 16-year tenure of one-time mentor Helmut Kohl.

The conservative has stamped her mark on Germany’s political centre ground with a pragmatic approach and willingness to adopt liberal competitors’ ideas, and has often reassured Germans by convincing them that she is on top of complicated crises.

She led a hard-nosed response to the eurozone debt crisis and allowed in large numbers of migrants in 2015, a move that was divisive both at home and abroad.

In this term, Ms Merkel will have to grapple with a possible Europe-US trade war, find common ground with France and others on shaping the EU’s future, and manage a potentially fragile coalition at home.

Ms Merkel’s new vice chancellor, centre-left Social Democrat Scholz takes over the purse strings held for eight years by steely conservative Wolfgang Schaeuble.

The sober and self-confident Mr Scholz, who was Ms Merkel’s labour minister during the 2008 financial crisis and then the mayor of prosperous Hamburg, is on the right of his party and an advocate of balanced budgets.

He stresses his party’s “very clear pro-European position” and the need for consensus with other EU countries on eurozone reform, but his arrival does not necessarily herald any major change of direction.

An often-awkward ally to Ms Merkel, the leader of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union party becomes Germany’s senior security official.

Mr Seehofer — whose party is traditionally a little further right than Ms Merkel’s — was one of the chancellor’s most prominent critics during the 2015 migrant influx, though the pair have since buried the hatchet.

The outgoing Bavarian governor, who has previously served as federal health and agriculture minister, now takes on the task of trying to keep a lid on migrant arrivals.

He has promised a “master plan” to speed up asylum procedures and increase deportations of rejected applicants.